arisandmartha is the creative collaboration between dancers, performers, and choreographers Aris Papadopoulos and Martha Pasakopoulou. Based in Athens, Greece, they work at the intersection of staged and site-specific dance performances, pushing the boundaries of choreography by integrating movement, performance languages, text, and conceptual ideas. The duo explores themes of togetherness, the performance of friendship on stage, re-enactment and ready-made materials, contemporary ritual practices, and strategies for activating and performing archives.

While pursuing individual artistic paths, Aris and Martha began collaborating in 2016, merging their interests and aesthetics into a shared dialogue. They focus on composition, rhythm, absurd imagery, awkwardness, and fragmentation to create works that activate their research archives and unfold dynamically in live performance. Embracing the dual role of performer and maker, their work continuously seeks new creative territories with each performative encounter.

Their body of work includes SKINFLICK (2024), they returned regularly, each time for more (2023), OUT OF SPRING (2022), ALL THAT MATTER or notes on performing friendship (2021-22), Lucy. tutorial for a ritual (2019), Five Steps to Save the World (2018), and touching.just (2018), the latter earning them recognition as Aerowaves 2018 Artists and leading to performances across Greece and Europe through the EDN and Aerowaves networks. arisandmartha have showcased their work at prominent venues and festivals, including the Athens & Epidaurus Festival, the 25th Kalamata International Dance Festival, The Place (London), Zürcher Theater Spektakel, Aerowaves 2018 (Sofia), Festival Artdanthé (Paris), and Conformazioni Festival (Palermo), among others.

In parallel, arisandmartha lead an ongoing choreographic research project titled IN-QUARRY. This project draws on their embodied experiences of practicing and performing in public spaces, particularly an abandoned quarry in the suburbs of Athens now repurposed as a leisure park. IN-QUARRY aims to document and process these embodied practices while developing new research tools, diversifying choreographic approaches, exploring human and non-human spatial interactions, and fostering cross-disciplinary connections with other artistic and scientific fields.

The duo’s work has received support from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports (2018–24), KLAP Maison pour la danse – Marseille (2018), FLUXUM Foundation – Geneva (2019), Flux Laboratory Athens (2019), GARAGE Performing Arts – Corfu (2018), Duncan Dance Research Center – Athens (2018–23), and Onassis AiR, Athens (2022–23). Both have been honored with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS, with Aris also being an Onassis AiR Fellow (2020).